The technology described herein relates to a system and method of tracking carriers such as shipping trailers, and in particular to a system and method of tracking carriers from the time each carrier enters a warehouse facility to the time it exits the warehouse facility.
The traffic volume of a warehouse facility can be very heavy. Several trailers will often be on the premises of a warehouse facility at any given time. Difficulties will therefore arise in determining where each specific trailer is located within the facility, particularly since the trailers often move within the warehouse facility after being initially parked upon their respective arrivals. These difficulties are further complicated if the location of a trailer is not recorded which may occur, for example, when a trailer arrives after normal business hours or during the weekends.
In addition to difficulties regarding each trailer's location, other problems may arise if the usage status (i.e. how each trailer is being used or for what purpose it is being used) of each of the trailers is unrecorded and/or unknown. For example, it may be unknown which trailers are damaged or already fully loaded, and therefore not available to carry additional product(s). Considerable time and effort may thus be wasted in order to find an empty trailer to load products for shipment.
Furthermore, it may be unknown which, if any, of the trailers have been reserved by a particular department of the warehouse facility. That is, it may be unknown who is assigned to or responsible for a particular trailer. A department may thus mistakenly select and use a trailer that has been already reserved by another department.
While it may be possible to keep manual notes regarding the location, usage status and department assignment of a particular trailer, these notes may not be readily available to all of the personnel of the warehouse. Keeping manual notes may be difficult in view of the heavy traffic volume at the warehouse facility and because the location, usage status and department assignment of a particular trailer may change while it is on the warehouse facility. Furthermore, storage of the manual notes is unreliable. Manual notes may also contain errors in recording the identification number of a trailer, etc., thereby resulting in wasted time and effort and reduced production.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a system and method of tracking trailers accurately at a warehouse facility beginning at or even before the time each trailer arrives at the warehouse facility to the time it leaves the facility. It would also be beneficial to store the tracking records so that an accurate audit trail can be generated.
In an exemplary implementation, a method of tracking carriers at a warehouse facility (and a system for performing the same) comprises collecting data relating to at least one of a location, usage status and department assignment of a plurality of carriers, providing the data to a computer system, and generating a web page using the data provided to the computer system. The web page graphically represents the at least one of the location, usage status and department assignment of each carrier, and is displayed on a terminal that is in communication with the computer system. A request to display the web page may be received by the computer system through an internet or intranet connection. The data relating to the at least one of a location, usage status and department assignment of the carriers may be provided to the computer system by a wireless rf signal, a terminal, or another computer system which processes the loading or unloading of items into or from the carriers.
The method may further comprise updating the collection of the data, providing the updated data to the computer system and dynamically changing the web page in response to the updated data. The data may be collected and updated from a time each carrier arrives at the warehouse facility to a time the carrier exits the warehouse facility. The data collected for each carrier may be stored. The web page may graphically represent the bay doors and yard slots of the warehouse facility and whether each of the bay doors and yard slots is occupied by one of the carriers. The web page may graphically represent the usage status and department assignment using color codes. The usage status may be at least one of the following: available, docked, loading, unloading, reserved, unavailable, unprocessed, outbound, pickup, inbound, history, and/or storage. The department assignment may be an assignment to one of the following departments of the warehouse facility: production, receiving, shipping and security.
Exemplary implementations may enable the location, usage status and department assignment of the trailers to be tracked at all times while each trailer is on the premises of the warehouse facility using a web browser based graphical display. The productivity of the warehouse facility can thus be enhanced by, for example, reducing trailer backlogs and allowing trailers to be found in less time. Exemplary implementations may also allow records of each trailer's stay at the facility to be stored so that an accurate audit trail can be created.